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What’s the Future of Affirmative Action?


The law needs support from the public or the courts to survive. Affirmative action doesn’t seem to be there.

Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in two cases challenging racially conscious admissions policy at the University of North Carolina and Harvard.

The anti-assertion action group Students for Fair Admissions made both cases. The group argues that these policies lead to illegal and unconstitutional racism, especially against white and Asian applicants, who could lose the zero-sum admissions process if their Black and Latino colleagues take precedence.

Lawyers argued in favor of affirmative action, including from the Biden administration, countering that the policies were necessary to address racial disparities in education centuries ago. They also say race is just one of the factors universities take into account when deciding which students to admit.

The Supreme Court has maintained affirmative action policies since 1978 and most recently in 2016. But the ideological structure of the court has changed dramatically since then. Now, six of the nine judges are conservatives appointed by Republican presidents, who often take an unfriendly view of affirmative action.

During nearly five hours of heated arguments for both cases, the court’s conservative majority judges fiercely questioned lawyers who argued in favor of affirmative action policies. They express doubt that such policies are necessary, equitable, or the best way to address racial gaps in higher education. Chief Justice John Roberts, who has long been a skeptic of affirmative action, and other conservative judges have argued that Harvard discriminated against Asian applicants by disliking them during the admissions process. .

Affirmative action policies “seem to be in jeopardy,” my colleague Adam Liptak, who runs the court, wrote after the hearing. The court is likely to issue its ruling in June.

In theory, legislators could override Supreme Court decisions. But such an inversion often requires the support of their constituents: Ultimately, the public elects the representatives to enact the law and place judges on the courts. The public can also protest or criticize the courts to try to sway them. And the public can push for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution or state constitutions.

That process is running into conflict over abortion rights, through backlash to the Supreme Court’s decision in June that brought down Roe v. Wade. Weeks after the ruling, voters in reliably conservative Kansas chose to uphold abortion rights in the state’s Constitution. Of the four measures related to abortion On state ballots in next week’s midterm elections, the three sought to unequivocally assert their right to this process.

Democrats also saw an uptick in polls after Roe was overturned (though those gains have waned). And President Biden has promised to sign abortion rights protections into federal law if Democrats extend their control over Congress.

A similar movement defending affirmative action seems unlikely since the majority of Americans oppose the policy. Nearly three-quarters of US adults said in March that race or ethnicity was not a factor in college admissions, a Pew Research Center survey found. Find. The majority of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians oppose consideration of race or ethnicity.

Even in the free states, most voters No support affirmative action. In 2020, about 57% of Californians rejected an amendment to the state Constitution that would allow government and public institutions, including public universities, to adopt affirmative action policy. In that same election, Biden won more than 63% of the vote in the state.

So if the Supreme Court were to rescind affirmative action, it’s not clear what path exists, if any, for policies like the University of North Carolina or Harvard to survive.

Without affirmative action, schools may struggle to promote diversity. Or they may have to resort to socioeconomic status and other authorization measures to do so, which some conservative judges seem to openly allow. “That’s really the question,” Adam said. “Not ‘Are universities losing?’ but “How do they lose?”

Writer Joan Didion, who died last year at the age of 87, never hired a decorator. Instead, she and her husband have filled their home with furniture and artwork that “make sense only to us,” they once wrote. Hundreds of those items will be auctioned off on November 16.

The collection is full of seemingly mundane objects: a paperweight, a blank notebook, and a lamp. It also houses some of her most iconic possessions, like oversized sunglasses and artwork by famous friends. Workers at the Stair Gallery in Hudson, NY, were inundated with calls from fans trying to buy their own little piece of Didion’s life.

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